Blind Men and the Elephant

What is the elephant? Is it India? Or is it simply the man I meet on the street? Who is the man? Or rather, who are the men? Are they Americans? Or are they merely global citizens with incomplete perspectives? And what are the parts of the "elephant" that they grasp? India's wealth? It's poverty? The man on the streets's wealth? His poverty? India's resources? The man's family? India's people? I'm not certain.
After all, poetry is vague for a reason. Regardless, though, "The Blind Man and the Elephant" caused me to think. For a time, I thought that Niswarth was all about Dharavi. Our work, and what we wanted to understand, was India's poverty. Or so i thought. But now I understand that I was making the mistake of the "single story." I've only been in India for about 48 hours, but I already see that there is much more than that. There is a population willing and ready to be educated. There is industry. There is growth. There is poverty, and there is wealth. Now I see that if India was to have a single story, that story would be one of contradictions, not one of poverty. I don't want to be one of the blind men, yet I, and I think many others, were. Now, though, I know that before I say what the elephant is all about, I need to feel not one part, but all parts.